In the August edition of Airliner World there is an informative article about this airport. When I got to the part about the future of the airport I was quite amazed to find that "the area's District Govenor has also earmarked an astonishing 65,000 hectares of land......where up to TEN more runways could be built, taking the eventual capacity to over 100 million passengers."

My question is could DME become bigger and better than say LHR, ORD, ATL and SIN etc?

DME is already prepared for the A380 and the future plans seem very optimistic. They plan to double the size of the current terminal which will allow two new aircraft piers providing parking for up to 36 additional aircraft. They aim to have this stage finished by 2012.

They say that by 2020 DME will handle over 30 million pax, so I don't know how far into the future they are looking when talking about 100 million pax.

Neutrality means that u don't really care cos the struggle goes on even when ur not there, blind and unaware

I don't think they will ever be at 100mil. The fact is that there are just not that many people that need they type of service to Moscow. Airports like ORD, LHR, SIN, ect. Handle so many pax because there is a need to travel there. I just don't see in happening.

The airport management may dream about as many runways as they want but only last week Russian ministry of transport clearly indicated that it would not allow DME to build more runways simply because it wants competition between
MOW airports to be fair. The government believes that DME is already in better position - two well-separated runways (in comparison with SVO's 1.5 runways), renovated terminal, highway and rail link to MOW city center. Well, in Russia the Government is the only one to decide who deserves what.

[6th Dec 2002] Russia’s East Line Group has unveiled ambitious plans to expand its Moscow Domodedovo Airport into a city super-hub over the next 30 years, potentially providing capacity for up to 100 million passengers annually.

East Line is in the process of reserving 650km2 (250mi2) of land surrounding Domodedovo in order to accommodate up to eight additional runways on top of the two it presently operates.

Although Moscow Sheremetyevo is still the city’s primary airport, it is rapidly losing passenger market share to Domodedovo, with its increasing capacity and superior, modern facilities.

Until the visa restrictions/requirements are relaxed I can't see 30 million visitors in any of Moscow's airports unless they are domestic or CIS visitors! If the Russian gov't would just charge an entry fee equal to the visa fee I think alot more people would visit. The visa paperwork/waiting/red tape gets to be a little tedious. Of course Russian need visas to go to alot of places so I guess it is a double edged sword...........DME is quite a nice airport though.
S